The LG GD900 Crystal has a few of the old favourite applications on board, like stopwatch (a very basic version - we're talking start, stop and reset here) and the voice recorder, which can go on and on and on thanks to the inbuilt 1.5GB of storage.

The latter is actually surprisingly clear, with the LG GD900 Crystal able to pick up conversations quite well in a packed room. Playback of said conversations is less pleasing, with an inability to scroll through easily, but transfer them the PC and it's a good time for all.

We had high hopes for the widgets menu on the homescreen, looking forward to the Samsung beating options we were bound to be given. We were left a little disappointed when the best thing on offer was either a weather widget - which took you to a (fairly decent and well laid out) online portal and didn't show any information on the homescreen - or an M-toy link.

The latter was a confusing set of 'games' that consisted of a number of options like a table tennis motion control game where you flung the phone around to register higher bounces (culminating in striking an aeroplane).

There's also tumbling dice (you can work that one out for yourselves, although it does have a weird board-based section) and a 'Wheel mania' application that allowed you to set up things like activities and food and spin the wheel to select one (presumably so you can decide on something to do) but this just kept spinning and spinning for ages.

Google Maps is your basic Java version on the GD900 Crystal, so don't expect all the whizz-bang features you've come to expect from the likes of the iPhone. More frustratingly GPS wasn't even present to help locate you - all we had was mobile tower triangulation to work out a rough location within a kilometre.

For a phone costing £500 this is a bit bizarre - we thought that the fact nearly every handset has it these days is a clear sign it's easy to implement.

The applications on the LG GD900 Crystal are basic, but functional. The ideas highlight the touch and motion properties on the phone are good in principle, but in our opinion only show how overly-sensitive the phone is, especially when it comes to accurately hitting the right section of the touchscreen.